


The Morn Is Hallowday

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Category: Tam Lin - Pamela Dean
Genre: Aftermath, Cats, Fae & Fairies, Female Friendship, Friendship, Gap Filler, Gen, Hot Chocolate, Late Night Conversations, Misses Clause Challenge, Post-Book(s), Shock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 10:08:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8886856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: Halfway through the walk from Forbes to Ericson, Molly realized that if Tina hadn't returned already from her folk dancing, she certainly would very soon, and in either case Janet's absence would require some explanation.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nnozomi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nnozomi/gifts).



> This is not actually the fandom we matched on, but Pamela Dean's version of _Tam Lin_ is a story very dear to my heart, and it occurred to me upon rereading that there is an obvious loose thread at the end of the book (beyond the deliberate ones relating to Medeous's threat and exactly how Janet and Thomas are going to cope with a baby). I hope you enjoy my attempt at tying it up.
> 
> Thank you to snickfic for beta-reading!

Halfway through the walk from Forbes to Ericson, Molly realized that if Tina hadn't returned already from her folk dancing, she certainly would very soon, and in either case Janet's absence would require some explanation.

There were two obvious problems with that.

First, the full truth would alarm Tina further without necessarily convincing her, and Molly didn't particularly want to be looked at as if she'd caught delusions from Janet. "Caught delusions, ha," she muttered to herself. "That sounds like some kind of Victorian flu. I'm sorry, I can't go to class; I've caught a nasty case of delusions. It's almost as bad as catching the vapors, or maybe consumption."

To be fair, she wouldn't believe the story herself if she hadn't been by the path and watched Janet cling grimly to Thomas through several magical transformations. But that wasn't much comfort now that she did believe and was faced with the impossibility of providing solid evidence to anyone else.

The second problem might be trickier to resolve, since it wasn't directly about Molly: namely, she wasn't sure Janet would want Tina to know the full truth. They'd become genuine friends since freshman year, but Molly couldn't quite shake the feeling that somewhere deep down, far beneath conscious thought, Janet still half-believed that Tina either couldn't understand or wouldn't care about things that shaded away from the practical or quantifiable, and was therefore reluctant to share the messier bits of her inner life with her. Why else had she come to Molly first about her pregnancy worries, when Tina was the one studying to be a doctor and had turned out better at calming her nerves?

"Pope unable to see Bentley's virtues for his flaws," Molly remarked to the indifferent night air. She should try that analogy the next time Janet got the specific frown line between her eyebrows that said she was attempting forbearance toward Tina -- though probably not in Tina's hearing. That would only spark trouble.

Friends, whatever anyone said in song and story, rarely made life simpler. Richer, yes; but definitely more complicated.

Molly sighed. Maybe Tina would be so relieved to hear that Janet was safe and no longer believed herself haunted that they could avoid going into more details until Janet left Thomas and Robin's room (whether tonight or not until morning) and could decide for herself how much she wanted Tina to know.

If not... if not, then Molly would tell the whole thing, ridiculous as it all sounded now that the odd, shivering sense of unreality Medeous and her riders had scattered around them, like light refracting dimly through deep water, was receding into the more prosaic sights and sounds of Blackstock students stumbling home after Halloween merriment. Molly could weather Tina's disbelief and Janet's potential sense of betrayal, but either way Tina deserved the truth.

In the event, she had a reprieve of about fifteen minutes between getting home and Tina's own return. She used it to divest herself of her sweater (which the Meebe promptly claimed as spoils of war, but that was cats for you), prepare hot water and two packets of Swiss Miss because this was clearly not going to be an easy conversation, and try to think of opening statements less alarming than, "It turns out that Professor Medeous is a faerie queen and she was going to sacrifice Thomas to Hell, but don't worry! Janet saved him, and by the way she's going to keep the baby."

"This isn't even my mess," Molly said glumly to the Meebe. "Pink curtain solidarity is all very well and good, but I don't see why I have to be the one translating impossibilities into something that has a prayer of hanging together under daylight scrutiny. I'm a biologist, not a poet." She stroked absently along the Meebe's soft, gray back in response to a demanding head butt. He purred obligingly.

She tried very hard not to think about the ways in which this _was_ her mess, at least if she wanted to stay involved with Robin. If she started down that mental path this soon, she might drive herself into an unholy chimera of a panic attack and major depression, which would do nobody any good and be extremely unpleasant besides.

Better to think of Medeous as a case study, some creature from the alien depths of the sea transplanted into the environs of Blackstock. No wonder she made no sense; whatever world she and her kind had evolved to master, it only looked like it should match up with Earth. The scaffolding behind the scenes was entirely different: down to the very laws of physics, in fact, since magic shouldn't actually be possible. Medeous didn't even look plausibly human when she stopped pretending.

"It's like mermaids," Molly told the Meebe. "Any mammal that can survive the open ocean should have blubber deposits all over and be mostly hairless to remove friction; they should look like seals or walruses, not skinny twigs with massive chests and flowing hair. If they do look like skinny twigs with flowing hair, they can't be mammals and are only pretending to be human-shaped as a lure. They're probably as full of teeth and horror as anglerfish."

Extending the analogy, this meant Robin had lived among anglerfish for centuries. How long did it take before he started acting and thinking more like an anglerfish than a human? Did she want to try persuading him back onto dry land, assuming that was even possible?

Fortunately the kettle shrieked, derailing the inevitable progression from not-thinking about a topic to thinking of nothing but that topic. Molly abandoned the Meebe to snatch the kettle off the hot plate before their neighbors could bang on the walls in protest at the noise, but before she had to decide whether to turn down the hot plate or risk making the cocoa too early, Tina opened the door.

She was whistling something cheerful and unfamiliar, a bit like Bach crossed with square dancing, which worked much better than it ought to have done. The tune slid abruptly off-key and died when she noticed Janet's absence.

"Where--" she began.

"She's fine; she's with Thomas; they've made up; she's going to keep the baby," Molly said as fast as possible without tripping over her tongue. "Cocoa?"

All of Tina's breath rushed out in a great whoosh and she walked somewhat dazedly across the room to collapse on Molly's bed, where she gathered the Meebe off his sweater hoard and hugged him. The cat withstood this with his usual admirable forbearance and purred like a miniaturized diesel engine. "Good. That's good," she said, and for a moment Molly hoped they could leave it at that, go to sleep, and let Janet make her own reassurances in the morning.

Then Tina glanced over at the hot plate, the kettle, and the two cups of instant cocoa and said, "It's also very sudden, and I have a feeling there's bad news to go along with the good. Hand me the chocolate and talk."

Molly made a face at the kettle. Stuck providing Janet's explanations after all.

"I'm not sure where to start. Do you want the version that's completely reasonable and true, but leaves half the things out, or the full version that's completely unreasonable, though still absolutely true?"

Tina looked pained. "Please don't tell me you've bought into Janet's haunting theory."

"I decided to treat it as a testable hypothesis and she provided some very convincing evidence," Molly said somewhat apologetically as she handed Tina a mug of cocoa. She sat down beside Tina and stirred her own drink with careful concentration, smashing any recalcitrant blobs of brown powder against the sides of the mug until she achieved a smooth and delicious consistency. "The trouble is, I don't think the evidence is replicable. No, strike that, I strongly hope it isn't replicable; and I therefore have no idea how to convince you I haven't gone mad."

"You've been a little crazy for years. I like you anyway," Tina said. "And I might as well know what you and Janet think happened. You can't draw useful conclusions from incomplete evidence, right?"

"Right," Molly agreed. She ventured a sip of cocoa, hissed through her teeth when it (predictably) scalded her tongue, and petted the Meebe when he decided two laps were better than one and insinuated his front half underneath her arm. He kneaded her thigh briefly to signal his approval of her capitulation.

She gave up on thinking of better opening statements.

"It turns out that Professor Medeous is a faerie queen who collects interesting humans for her court, which is currently doubling as the Classics department. She was going to sacrifice Thomas to Hell. The only way to save him was to have his pregnant lover -- Janet, obviously -- drag him off a horse at midnight on Halloween and hold onto him while he turned into a variety of alarming animals and finally caught fire. Janet dumped him in the stream by the highway. When they got back onto the bridge, Medeous made a vague threat about turning people into trees and sacrificing two next time, but let us all go. I left them in his room at Forbes, probably arguing in increasingly esoteric quotations over whether or not to get married."

Tina stared blankly at her, mug forgotten on Molly's nightstand. Molly sympathized. She'd had a similar reaction when she emerged from the blazing focus of yanking Robin off his horse and turned to see Thomas twist out of his own skin and clothes and reform as an extremely put-out lion. She was still undecided whether having Robin's hand to hold had been more a comfort than otherwise, given that his reaction to Janet's potential death at Thomas's hands -- or claws, fangs, wings, whichever -- had been badly-suppressed laughter rather than anything appropriate to the situation.

Being irritated at Robin was at least something familiar to grasp in a world that had tilted off its previous Euclidean foundations.

She tried to remember whether she'd left anything important out of her report, since any parts she didn't mention up front would sound even less plausible if she tried to tack them on later.

"Oh, and I pulled Robin off his horse, just in case, even though he wasn't the sacrifice and I'm not pregnant. He and Nick belong to Medeous, too. They've been part of her court for centuries. They used to be actual Shakespearean actors, as in, they knew Shakespeare himself, which is part of why they're so peculiar. Thomas is only as old as he looks, though. I think that's everything."

Tina picked up her mug and took a long drink of cocoa. Then she said, "You're right; that's completely unreasonable."

"It really is," Molly agreed. "I know exactly how mad it sounds, and I have no proof whatsoever. Janet's not even burned. But it's all true. Professor Medeous is a faerie queen. Janet saved Thomas from being sent to Hell. My boyfriend is really four hundred years old and might get sent to Hell the next time Medeous needs a sacrifice. I don't know if there's any way to break him free of her court before then. I don't know if he even wants to be free. And I have no idea what to do with any of that."

Tina made a sympathetic noise in the back of her throat and retrieved her arm from under the Meebe to pat Molly's shoulder. "I can't say I believe any of it -- except for Janet dragging Thomas off a horse and dumping him into the stream, and the esoteric quotations. Those parts are easy. But I believe that you believe it," she offered. She laughed then, a little helpless, awkward gurgle (a laugh embarrassed at itself, not like Robin's laughter at all) and added, "I feel like we've fallen into one of those books you and Janet love, only neither of you is nearly as pleased as I would have expected."

"'We are plain quiet folk and I have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner,'" Molly said, and followed it with her own snort of awkward laughter. "It's all very well to read about magic and high drama, but I have discovered tonight that I prefer my own life a bit less harrowing."

"Mmm," Tina said. "I can see that. High adrenaline levels aren't healthy over the long term. But what does a less harrowing life mean in practical terms? It sounds like Robin is your strongest connection to this mess. Why don't you dump him?"

"No! I didn't go to the trouble of dragging him off a horse just to let Medeous snatch him back without a fight."

"Okay, that's one thing sorted out. You can deal with the rest in the morning," Tina said while Molly was still blinking at the vehemence of her own refusal. She hadn't realized she'd already made that choice, until Tina presented the opposite as a more reasonable option.

"I-- That was very sneaky of you," Molly said, admiringly. "You're not supposed to be sneaky. You're supposed to be straightforward. When did you learn to be sneaky?"

Tina smiled over the rim of her mug, a faint smudge of cocoa visible on her upper lip. "I had to learn something from my psychology classes. You want to stay with Robin and get him away from Professor Medeous's influence. That's your goal; now you can work out how to reach it, whether that means saving him from a faerie queen or resolving your shared delusion that he was born in old England."

"I have not caught delusions from Janet," Molly grumbled. "They're not contagious."

"Of course," Tina agreed serenely. "Pink curtain problems might be, though."

Molly drank another swallow of her cocoa and stared grumpily into its depths. "I dislike you intensely."

"No, you don't."

"No. I don't."

Halloween was over; Janet and Thomas were safe; and she had seven years to figure out what to do with Robin. Everything would look more manageable in the morning.

Molly leaned sideways against Tina's shoulder, trusting that Tina wouldn't let her fall or squash the cat. "Thanks for letting me dump all that on you. But enough of my problems. I want to know that at least one of us had a nice, normal evening. Tell me how your dancing went."

Tina made a few false starts before she found the right amusing anecdote -- she had gotten quite good at them over the past two years -- and Molly let herself relax into the soothing flow of her friend's voice, the soft rumble of the Meebe's purr, and the homely comfort of hot cocoa lingering on her tongue.


End file.
